Pop Culture Blog

Tag Archives: Emma Rios

Post navigation

This week, I thought it would be pertinent, in light of last week’s post, to talk about the differences between comics’ crossovers, team-ups, and guest appearances.

To begin, let us examine what a crossover truly is in a comic book. For most of us a crossover is an event within a comic book publisher’s universe between multiple books and it will sometimes include an “event title” comic book that ties all of the crossovers together. Marvel’s “Civil War” title and tie-in stories and DC’s “Blackest Night” title and tie-in stories are two prime examples of a “crossover event.”

A tie-in is a comic book that is an ongoing comic for a publisher and the story within the comic relates back to the “crossover event” comic’s story. So, as an example, the Wolverine comic book told a short story over the course of a few issues that tied back into the “Civil War” event title. Yet, crossovers do not have to be so complicated.

As you will see in this weeks’ Marvel Comics Review of the Week, the story-arch from “The Amazing Spider-Man” #677 from two weeks ago and “Daredevil: The Man without Fear!” #8 from last week is indeed a crossover story between the two books. Two of the most notable reasons to call it a crossover story are that the story-arch shares the same title and the story is told in two different ongoing series. Another notable reason to call it a crossover story is that the entire story-arch was written by the same writer (this is not always the case, sometimes writers work on a story-arch together in their own respective titles). So basically, any time a story starts in one comic title and ends, or parts of it are told, in another title, it is considered to be a crossover story.

Now to talk about team-ups and what they entail. Really, all crossovers and guest appearances could be considered team-ups. A team-up is accomplished when one hero works with another hero to accomplish a goal that only one of them by themselves could not conquer alone.

One last example, then I’ll move on to guest appearances. “Marvel Team-Up” was the publisher’s answer to DC’s success with their team-up titles. The comic continues today. For a while it was known as “Spider-Man Team-Up“. The original series almost always featured Spider-Man, so it makes sense that he would take over the title. The title changed to “Marvel Team-Up” again in 2005 and usually featured Spider-Man as one of the characters. The most recent incarnation, as it could be argued, is “Avenging Spider-Man.” Every issue features Spider-Man teaming up with an Avenger, but will probably stray from the Avengers‘ line-up in the future.

Okay, one more example, and then I swear I’ll change over to guest appearances. One of the best team-up stories to come out in a long time was Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert‘s “Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine” mini-series. It was an awesome time-traveling, possibly alternate dimension hopping, epic that spanned much of Marvel continuity. If you love comics, you should definitely pick this story up.

Lastly, we’ll examine what a guest appearance is and how it works within comics. Guest appearances are not all that complicated. A guest appearance is when one hero appears in another hero’s comic for a story, but there is no crossover into the guest’s own title. The most recent example I can think of was when Wolverine appeared in X-Factor #230. Wolverine showed up in X-Factor for part of the story, but no one from X-Factor was in a recent issue of Wolverine and no part of the story bled over into Wolverine‘s title. Therefore, this issue can be said to have had a guest appearance by Wolverine in it.

I hope that all of this explanation has cleared up any questions about the differences between crossovers, team-ups, and guest appearances. These types of stories can be some of the most fun for readers and creators alike. They offer something outside of the normal comic book story and give creators the chance to shine with other characters and story possibilities.Continue reading →